The partial reduction and water splitting properties of metal substituted ferrite mediums for two-step thermochemical hydrogen production, were carried out by TPR/O(Temperature programmed reduction/oxidation) method at a temperature of below 1173 K and under atmospheric pressure. was added to the ferrite as a binder to prevent the sintering. As the results, the reactivity of the metal species added to the ferrite mediums decreased in the order of Cu>Co>Ni>Mn, on the basis of water-splitting temperature. It was also found that the produced hydrogen amounts in the water-splitting step on partial reduced mediums were corresponding to the consumed hydrogen amounts in the previously partial reduction step.

We optimized the compositions of electrolyte and additives for anode in Ni-MH battery to improve the electrode characteristics at ambient and low temperatures using response surface method(RSM). Among various additives for anode, PTFE exhibited the greatest influence on the discharge capacity of the anode. Through response optimization process, we found the optimum composition of the additives to exhibit the greatest discharge capacity. When the amount of additives was too small, the anode was degraded with time due to the low binding strength among alloy powders and the resultant separation of powders from the current collector. In contrast, the addition of large amount of the additives increased in the resistance of the electrode. In addition, the discharge capacity of the anode at increased with decreasing the concentration of KOH, NaOH and LiOH in design range of electrolyte. The resistance and viscosity of electrolyte appear to affect the discharge capacity of the anode at low temperature.

In order to verify the feasibility of expansion of back-fire limit equivalence ratio in the hydrogen-fueled engine with external mixture, the characteristics of performance and combustion are experimentally analyzed with change of intake/exhaust valve timings under the fixed valve overlap period of CA(non-valve overlap period). These characteristics are also tested for the change of exhaust valve closing timing while intake valve opening timing is fixed to clear the main cause of back-fire occurrence. As the results, the less valve overlap period center is retarded, the more back-fire limit equivalence ratio increases and back-fire does not occurred after TDC. In addition, it was shown that the control of back-fire is dependent on intake valve opening timing than valve overlap period.

To check the feasibility of SMART(Steam Methane Advanced Reforming Technology) system, an experimental investigation was performed. A fluidized bed reactor of diameter 0.052m was operated cyclically up to 10th cycle, alternating between reforming and regeneration conditions. FCR-4 catalyst was used as the reforming catalyst and calcined limestone(domestic, from Danyang) was used as the absorbent. Hydrogen concentration of 98.2% on a dry basis was reached at for the first cycle. This value is much higher than concentration of 73.6% in the reformer of conventional SMR (steam methane reforming) condition. The hydrogen concentration decreased because the capture capacity decreased as the number of cycles increased. However, the average hydrogen concentration at 10th cycle was 82.5% and this value is also higher than that of SMR. Based on these results, we could conclude that the SMART system can replace SMR system to generate pure hydrogen without HTS (high tempeature shift), LTS (low temperature shift) and separation process.

The covalently cross-linked sulfonated polyetheretherketone (CL-SPEEK) membrane was prepared by four-step synthesis of sulfonation-sulfochlorination, partial reduction, lithiation, and cross-linking, and its electrochemical and mechanical properties were investigated for water electrolysis application. The prepared ion exchange membranes showed good electrochemical and mechanical properties; proton conductivity of 0.116 S/cm at , water uptake of 44.6%, ion exchange capacity of 1.75 meq/g-dry-memb., tensile strength of 64.25 MPa and elongation of 61.11%. The membrane electrode assembly (MEA) with homemade membranes were prepared by non-equilibrium impregnation-reduction (I-R) method. Especially, the electrochemical surface area (ESA) and roughness factor of CL-SPEEK electrolyte by cyclic voltammetry method were 23.46 and 307.3 , respectively. The prepared MEA was used in the unit cell of water electrolysis and the cell voltage was 1.81 V at 1 A/ and , with platinum loadings of 1.31 mg/.

The hyper-eutectic Mg-33.5%Ni alloy was rapidly solidified by melt spinning process. The melt-spun Mg-33.5%Ni has amorphous structure and crystallization occurred above . The hydriding and dehydriding rates of melt-spun Mg-33.5%Ni increased with cycle and high rate of hydrogen storage occurred at 3rd cycle. The maximum hydrogen amount absorbed in melt-spun Mg-33.5%Ni at is about 4.5%.

An experimental study on the design of a catalytic combustor for 1.6 kW MCFC system has been performed. The roles of the catalytic combustor are to completely burn anode off-gas and to supply sufficient to cathode channels. In order to avoid hot spot or fuel slippage, flow uniformity at the catalyst inlet was achieved by installing two crossing perforated plates between the catalyst and the mixing chamber with minimal pressure drop. A Pd/Ce/Ni- catalyst was used for complete combustion of the off-gas at GHSV=36,000.

In this paper, the performance characteristics of heat pump system using a new refrigerant subcooling system designed for the study, are introduced. The new heat pump system have the ice storage tank at the outlet of condenser. The experimental apparatus is a well-instrumented water/water heat pump which consisted of working fluid loop, coolant loop, and ice storage tank. The experiment parameters of subcooling ranged as the evaporating temperature from to , the condensing temperature from to . The test of the ice storage was carried out at evaporating temperature of and the ice storage mode is Ice-On-Coil type. The working fluid was R-22 and the storage materials were city-water. The test results obtained were as follows; The refrigerant mass flow rate and compressor shaft power were unchanged by the degrees of subcooling, that is, they were independent of degrees of subcooling. The cooling capacity of the new heat pump system increase as the evaporating temperature and subcooling degrees increase and is higher by , compared to the normal heat pump system. The COP of the new heat pump system increases as the degrees of subcooling and evaporating temperature increase and is higher by 28% than that of the normal heat pump system.

Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell(PEMFC) is very interesting power source due to high power density, simple construction and operation at low temperature. But it has problems such as high cost, improvement of performance and effect of temperature. These problems can be approached to be solved by using mathematical models which are useful tools for analysis and optimization of fuel cell performance and for heat and water management. In this paper, the present work is to develop an electrochemical model to examine the electrochemical process inside PEM fuel cell. A complete set of considerations of mass, momentum, species and charge is developed and solved numerically with proper account of electrochemical kinetics. When depth of gas channel becomes thinner, diffusion of reactant makes well into gas diffusion layer(GDL) and the performance increases. Although at low current region there is little voltage difference between experimental data of PEM fuel cell and numerical data. When the porosity size of gas diffusion layer for PEM fuel cell is bigger, oxygen diffusion occurs well and oxygen mass fraction appears high in catalyst layer.

The reforming process for hydrogen production generates some impurities. Impurities in hydrogen such as , CO, , affect fuel cell performance. It is well known that CO generated by the reforming process may negatively affect performance of cell, cause damage on catalysts resulting performance degradation. Hydrogen produced by reforming process includes about 2% methane. The presence of methane up to 10% is reported negligible degradation in cell performance. However, methane more than 10% in hydrogen stream had not been researched. The concentration of impurity supplied to the fuel cell was verified by gas chromatography(GC). In this study, the influence of on performance of PEM fuel cell was investigated by means of current vs. potential experiment, long run(10 hr) test and electrochemical impedance measurement when the concentrations of impurities were 10%, 20% and 30%.

Proton exchange membrane Fuel Cells(PEMFCs) have been spotlighted because of their broad potential application for potable electrical devices, automobiles and residential usages. However, their utilization is limited to low temperature operation due to the electrolyte dehydration at high temperature. High temperature PEMFC operation offers high CO tolerance and easy water management. This review presents development of high temperature() PEMFC. Especially, PEMFC which is based on acid-doped PBI membrane is discussed.

Physicochemical properties of carbon nanofibers were evaluated as a supercacitor electrode materials could store electrochemical energy reversibly. A capacitance of carbon nanofiber electrode was increased gradually, depending on the PVDF binder ratio. A feasibility of EDLC electrode was estimated with specific surface area measurement by BET method and mesopore structure of carbon nanofiber surface could be explained electrochemical absorption-desorption in aqueous electrolyte. PVDF 5 wt.% ratio in electrode was observed a suitable binder amount by CV result.

Titanium foil and mesh(anodized tubular electrode, ATTE) were anodized in a bath at with 20V external bias applied, then annealed at different temperatures() to obtain tubular on the Ti substrate. The prepared sample was used to investigate rate of hydrogen production as well as Cr(VI) reduction. The ATTEs annealed at relatively lower temperatures showed higher activity than those at relatively higher temperatures. In particular, the Cr(VI) reduction was pH-dependent. To improve photocatalytic Cr(VI) reduction with the ATTEs, two configurations, fixing foil type and rotating mesh type, were also compared. As a result, the rotating mesh type was much more effective for Cr(VI) reaction than the former due to the more efficient use of the light. In the rotating type reactor, as the rotating speed increased, the rate of the Cr(VI) reduction was getting faster.

An experimental study on scale-up of Electro-electrodialysis(EED) to increase the efficiency of HI decomposition section in the IS(Iodine-Sulfur) process was carried out. The EED stack extends the effective area of the membrane to 20 times of that formerly used in a single EED unit cell. The experiment was carried out using HIx solution() at and various solution flow rates of 20, 30, 40 and 50 cc/min. The increased HI molality in catholyte after one-pass throughout from the EED stack was 3 mol/kg-, 2.2 mol/kg-, 2 mol/kg- and 1.37 mol/kg- at 20, 30, 40 and 50 cc/min, respectively. These values satisfied the target of HI molality(the increase of HI molality: 2 mol/kg-) in the IS process for hydrogen production of 20 L/hr.

There are several methods for the hydrogen production such as steam reforming of natural gas, photochemical method, biological method, electrolysis and thermochemical method, etc. These days it has been widely studied for the hydrogen production method having low hydrogen production cost and high efficiency. In this paper, patents in the hydrogen production by steam reforming of natural gas were gathered and analyzed. The search range was limited in the open patents of USA(US), European Union(EP), Japan(JP), and Korea(KR) from 1996 to 2006. Patents were gathered by using key-words searching and extracted by filtering criteria. The trends of the patents was analyzed by the years, countries, companies, and technologies.

Hydrogen is clean and renewable and is recognized as a very promising energy to solve both depletion of petroleum resource and environmental problems caused by use of fossil fuels. Extensive researches have been performed worldwide on the production technologies of hydrogen. In this paper, characteristics of hydrogen production technologies were analyzed from the literature survey. Also, The technology trend of hydrogen production was scrutinized based on patent analysis. In patent analysis the search range was limited to the open patents issued from 1996 to 2005. Patents were gathered by using the key-words searching method and filtered by desirable filtering criteria. The technology trend of hydrogen production was discussed by classifying each patent based on the publishing year, country, and company, and the type of production technology.